- Developers of Cities: Skylines 2 have noticed a growing toxicity in their community, which is affecting engagement and creativity.
- The CEO of Colossal Order expressed concern about the negative impact of toxicity on the team and the community.
- The developers still encourage helpful criticism from the community but ask for it to be constructive and kind.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/mVaIY
@AnActOfCreation @games Gamers have always been toxic but I think it’s gotten worse since 2020
Have they considered the likelihood of the increased toxicity being due to their business model and product performance?
No?
I didn’t think so.
I’m with you, that studio brought the Sims sales model into the new era. The only people who actually play all their content are either wealthy losers or pirates. Nothing is more unwelcoming than a small closed off community.
I’m surprised they didn’t see this coming. A lot of people had high expectations because of the impact the first game had and if it wasn’t better in every way there was bound to be some negative feedback.
They may have expected typical gamers to be more respectful than they are.
Huge mistake.
There was no way the game was going to be better in every way, the previous game was being worked on for the better part of a decade.
Yeah I think expectations are too high, where people expected a perfect game like cities skylines forgetting that when it launched it was also a very rocky start.
Gamers in general are just very entitled, and very unforgiving
Gamers in general are just very entitled, and very unforgiving
Didn’t the sequel have some pretty large problems on launch?
Nah man, that’s just entitlement. Wanting your $50 game to work well when you buy it is peak entitlement, you should be happy your game is running at 10fps with your 4080 RTX.
well yeah, they are trying to sell a game that looks straight up unfinished, like it was a masterpiece.
entitled much? did they expect praise?
What? You’re not hurting only the devs here (though, it still wouldn’t be okay to hurt the devs in the first place).
Let’s be honest here. Cities Skylines 2 community is so toxic it’s actually a burden even for players. The Steam forums and most online places dedicated to the game are full of entitled people who, instead of going for another game, spend their days shitting on it. Even going as far as jumping over people actually enjoying the game. That’s what toxicity means. And you can find any excuse you want, it’s not a sane behaviour.
Shouldn’t expect toxicity.
This is the very definition of gas lighting.
Customers: “This is not what I paid for”
Colossal Order: “You’re so toxic”
If there’s one thing to take from this, it’s that the toxicity just needs to be directed at those actually responsible. Not the devs, but at corporate forcing the game to release early.
Players: “your game doesn’t work. It’s riddled with bugs. It has serious performance issues and doesn’t run on most hardware. It lacks modding support as well as basic features that were present in the previous game”
Devs:
Such a toxic community! I popped over to reddit and saw posts like this
This bug was introduced with the last Patch last year before they went for christmas/new year holidays. They are back since 1 week now and i think and hope they patch it as soon as possible . To be fair its only a Problem early till midgame before you got youre economy half way working, after this point you dont have money Problems at all . I find the ai pathfinding + the cargo System more gamebreaking then the money bug
On steam checking new reviews shows people are unhappy and refunding but there’s hardly any vitriol there either. Moderators are quick but not that quick.
Over on the official forums we see complaints, disappointment and frustration but little in the way of outright hatred.
I’ve yet to run across anything that crosses a line in terms of content I would moderate, however that doesn’t mean moderators didn’t nuke such comments before I could see them.
This looks like the expected reaction to a game being broken on release. The devs are simply shifting blame to the community.
I wonder how much of the negative feedback is The Sims style issues where a lot of content is either going to be patched in later or come in as DLC but in the meantime something just feels like it’s missing.
A slightly separate issue than just bugs but then again didn’t some traffic issues in the original game get fixed that way?
“In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see.”
jkjk I know it’s coming and I love Cities Skylines 2 even in the state it’s in, but people are understandably impatient and upset at waiting for promised features to arrive.
Have they even given a timeframe for when mods will release because I haven’t seen them say anything about it since launch, I’m assuming because another team is developing it.
Per CO’s January 15th word of the week:
As we have stated earlier, there is no higher priority than releasing the modding support for the game. The Editor UI is expected to be ready enough for the closed beta in a few weeks. There is an issue with the asset import still that we are hard at work solving. If the issue is not resolved in a reasonable time we’ll consider releasing the editor without the ability to import custom assets and just have the maps and code modding present. Whichever the resolution for the modding support is, we can’t wait to see your creations!
closed beta in a few weeks, full release probably sometime thereafter.
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of where this community has gone in general.
Excusing toxic gamer communities, accusing the developer of things for pointing it out? All because the game not in a good state is toxic in itself and really not what this community should be.
This place gets worse every week.
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding what kind of commentary you were expecting.
Leading up to release as soon as the first reviews pointed out bad performance (see thread), many on Lemmy were bashing CO/Paradox for putting out a beta-stage product as if it was fully released, and Lemmings and people at large were never real fans of being unpaid QA testers for game companies.
Mind you, I love this game, and there’s a lot in there that I can tell CO devs put their heart and soul in. But I see a comment or a post every now and then saying “Lemmy is becoming so toxic, like Reddit” [1] [2] [3] [4] and I’m trying to figure out what exactly has changed, if you can help me out here.
None of that excuses being toxic around the game though.
At most, it excuses just refunding it. And then never interacting with it or the community around it ever again.
I absolutely agree. There’s a line between constructive criticism/feedback and toxicity, some cases are obvious but others I don’t know where exactly to draw it. Those that aren’t interested in the game after being let down may be best advised to refund and move on with their life.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where to strike a good balance to avoid both an "echo chamber where any dissent is extinguished’, and a ‘cesspool of toxic jerks talking ironically’.
Those that aren’t interested in the game after being let down may be best advised to refund and move on with their life.
It’s okay to hold a company responsible for the sale of a poor product. You don’t have to give them a free pass and just go away.
You can let them know what they did wrong, and if they’re smart, they won’t do the same wrong thing again, the next time they sell their next product.
And any human being on the planet, when they are not listened to, will become upset and rude. The point is for any company to strive for the win-win, and listen to their customers, and not just try to sell them the next bad product and repeat the same bad cycle.
For some reason people seem to experience the most rage, vocalization frustration, etc. when it comes to having their entertainment fucked with (whether pricing, content itself, etc). Companies can cause global recession or market crashes, be responsible for child labor resulting in death and dismemberment, or engage in flat out fraud, but those companies will never bring out the toxicity, death threats, entitlement, and communal anger like a video game or film/tv company that impacts the entertainment of the masses. When people used to think of the most evil company in America back in the early 2010’s, EA was more hated than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or AIG. That never made sense to me.
For some reason people seem to experience the most rage, vocalization frustration, etc. when it comes to having their entertainment fucked with (whether pricing, content itself, etc).
You should never fuck around with the plebs and their ‘bread and circuses’, especially if your government is not doing well.
Companies can cause global recession or market crashes … or engage in flat out fraud, but those companies will never bring out the toxicity, death threats, entitlement, and communal anger
People are pissed off at inflation, the general cost of everything (including AAA games), laws and punishments not being applied evenly/fairly, etc., these days.
I think the latter part of your comment is a bit hyperbolic (especially part of your comment that I edited out when quoting it in my response).
The defunct Consumerist used to run a poll. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/?sh=2dc357397aeb . It was always strange how EA beat out the companies that I think do more harm to society for several years. For some reason it’s entertainment companies that draw a lot of vocal ire from consumers, despite financial institutions, pharma, telecoms, oil, factory farms, etc. doing more explicit and literal harm.
Toxic devs get a toxic community. Why should I express sympathy for them experiencing consequences?
How were the devs behaving toxic? I mean, should be easy enough to provide quotes, right?
Remember when they launched the game in a shit state and charged full price for it, then failed to communicate? Actions speak louder than words, and those are some pretty toxic actions.
That’s not toxic, though. I get that those actions are annoying and really poor, but they’re not… toxic. As in, they aren’t done with the intention of poisoning the relationship, in fact quite the opposite, they’re meant to exploit it to take money out of it. Hence “exploitative” might be a much better term to use.
But importantly, being exploited is no reason to be toxic to workers who don’t make the decisions in return. Especially not in a situation where there are ample ways to go about just undoing the damage done to you, namely refunding the game then putting the company on ignore on whatever stores you frequent.
I repeat, for the last time, I’ve never advocated for toxicity or harassment to workers. Only to the companies they represent. Please, if you’re going to argue with me, argue based on what I say, not what you decide I mean.
Toxic devs get a toxic community. Why should I express sympathy for them experiencing consequences?
Are these not your words? I get that you aren’t advocating toxicity to workers, but you are defending it.
Devs clearly refers to the company that develops the game. Try again.
The fact that you’re harping on this point is because you know I don’t agree with personal harassment. You are aware that I don’t agree with people being abusive about specific people who work for the company. You’re making bad faith arguments to try to prove “You were saying this”, which I was not, and if I was, is clearly not what I intended. Move on.
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of what this community has become, corporate bootlickers.
Excusing companies scamming customers because gamers dared to point out the scam? All because the companies quarterly profits weren’t up enough, is a really toxic state and not what this community should be.
There was no scam. They were upfront about the issues before release.
Stating facts is not bootlicking. It’s just being a mature, fair adult about things.
Can you link any prerelease announcements that include the bugs and performance issues?
At this point, I’m mad they’re about to launch the DLC for every damn feature. Everyone should avoid being toxic, but Paradox/Colossal Order aren’t blameless here. They shipped the game half-finished, and are gonna screw you out of your money. Just go back to the first Skylines.
Simulation speed grinds to a halt as soon as you slapdown a few high density buildings. You basically have to but endless low density sprawl or your city will grind to a halt. I think the Media team of colossal order deserve the toxicity they are receiving.
Thanks for your honest thoughts on it and your experience. Even though CO media team doesn’t deserve toxicity imo, (I think Paradox management deserves it more), a lot is genuine feedback about people’s poor experiences with the game.
I pushed through a 100k pop play through at 10fps 720p by the end before I upgraded my PC. That would be unacceptable for most but I had fun.
I had fun as well and got to 160k. I tried to reduce population as much as I could but my city was way to developed.
For me there is no replay value until more is added. The cities are really plain and a lot of the default assets look like crap. I know it will be fixed in the future but CO has this attitude that we should be greatful for the shit that was released and are happy to keep us waiting months for basic fixes and features.
Whatever complaint you got about the game, saying that anyone « deserves toxicity » is not the clever take you think it is.
I scammed hundreds of thousands of people how dare they post mean comments on my works social media.
If you were scammed, go to court. If you need to grasp on any excuse to leash out a shitty online behaviour, fix your life.
If they are hurt by comments on the internet then they shouldn’t be a social media manager.
So because their job means interacting with the community that means they customers are allowed to go ham and be total assholes? That’s like saying that just because you work retail you shouldn’t be upset by customers being dicks.
It’ll absolutely happen anyway due to the nature of humans, and having a thick skin will help you cope with working a job like that, but that doesn’t mean the customers should be acting that way and that we should just normalize and enable that behavior just because that’s the way it is. It just perpetuates the problem.
If you’re working retail and your job is to deal with customers I highly doubt your boss will let you withdraw communication with your customers because some of them were verbally mean.
I mean, you’re right, that’s just life™, but that’s still fundementally fucked up. For profit companies have to do that because they want everyone’s dollar, and if that means you’re a better fit for a job because you can deal with people being awful, then… It’s a shame we’ve ended up in that position, societally.
Retail usually calls the cops and bans customers who threaten or scream at employees, which is the real world version of withdrawing communication.
I get your fee fees are hurt because a video game was not perfect, but people flinging shit like caged monkeys get shut down in most jobs. Its not excusable just because muh vidya gaem
If you can’t behave in a respectful manner, you shouldn’t interact with someone else.
See? I can do this too.
I don’t agree with that at all. There’s plenty of people I don’t respect and I will not treat respectfully yet I shouldn’t be barred from interacting with these people. Especially if they are a public figure with the power to influence change.
The president of the United States repealed row v wade. Should everyone opposed to that refrain from toxicity. I think they are well within their right to kick up a stink, be angry and make their voices heard.
